Much of the public shops at retail stores, such as grocery stores and discount stores, where shopping carts are used. The handle of a shopping cart is typically tubular in shape and made from a metal or plastic. The shopping carts are used repeatedly each day by a number of different shoppers, and generally are not cleaned between uses. As such, shopping cart handles can serve as important vectors of infectious microorganisms between customers. Such infectious microorganisms include disease-causing bacteria and viruses.
Infants and young children are especially at risk for contamination as they are placed in the seat of the shopping cart. Infants and children often put their hands in their mouths after having them on the cart handle and/or they put their mouths directly on the handle. In this manner, pathogenic microorganisms can be transmitted from a previous cart user to subsequent at-risk persons.
The risk for potential contamination from shopping cart handles in grocery stores is further increased. Because of lapses in adherence to farming standards and because such standards can be lower in other countries, native and imported vegetables can be contaminated with potentially dangerous pathogenic microorganisms. For example, one recent food-borne outbreak resulted in the death of three people and infection of hundreds more with Hepatitis A from scallions imported from Mexico. There have also been outbreaks related to contamination with Cyclospora bacteria of raspberries from Guatemala and with Salmonella of tomatoes from the U.S. and cantaloupes from Mexico. As a consequence of touching such contaminated vegetables in a grocery store and then touching a shopping cart handle, spread of pathogenic microorganisms can occur by physical transfer.
Moreover, research has shown that infectious microbes can live far longer on dry, inanimate surfaces, such as plastic and fabrics, than once thought. Thus, the risk of infectious contamination from shopping cart handles is an increasing concern to both retail stores and to their patrons.
To remedy this situation, a store could sanitize the handle of each shopping cart after each use. This however, would be an unrealistic solution, as several customers handle each of the store's scores of shopping carts daily. To implement such a sanitation program would be costly and time-consuming for the store. Shoppers have the option of taking cleansing materials to a store to clean shopping cart handles prior to use. This option is inconvenient for shoppers. While a shopper could wear gloves to protect himself from the cart handle, this would be inconvenient, costly, and would not prevent a child from teething on or otherwise contacting as exposed handle.
Various covers for shopping cart handles have been proposed. However, such covers do not provide for convenient dispensing of the covers that will ensure that a cover is always available when shopping.
Thus, there is a need to provide a cart handle cover system that provides cart handle covers in a convenient, inexpensive, and effective manner.